“If that’s what you say,” he nodded, turning to give Virgil a hint of a smile.
Chapter 7
All of a sudden, the light of the campfire became hazy and dim in the antique mirror, threads of clouds obscuring the Bandits Hollow Gang from view. Frustrated, Brandi tapped insistently on the glass, to no avail. She began knocking on it like a door.
“What happened to her?” she demanded of Evangeline’s great-great grandmother.
For a while there was a silence that Evangeline’s great-great grandmother didn’t attempt to fill. But then the mirror began to clear, and Brandi saw Evangeline galloping on a paint horse with its mane and tail whipping in the wind. Members of the Bandits Hollow Gang sprang from shadows along a winding, narrow road lined by steep, rocky bluffs to ambush a series of horse-drawn wagons. Evangeline held a gun in her hand, her face nearly covered with a black bandana. In her timberwolf gray eyes was nothing but defiance. Virgil couldn’t help smiling at the swift way she cut off horses, while he demanded that they drop their lock boxes and open their wagon doors to unload cargos of gold.
It was clearly spring now—aspens were fringed with bright green leaves and the outlaws rode to the ambush with rolled up sleeves. Seasons began to pass, however, and soon, aspen leaves in the mirror changed to gold, or became silvery-gray and fell to the frosted ground like lost coins. Yet with every picture the mirror revealed, the Bandits Hollow Gang rode as an expert team, following Evangeline Tinker with her long, flowing hair and remarkable streak of gray as she often took the lead to halt the stagecoach or wagon horses. Months appeared to pass as they picked off overland cargos on remote mountain roads, or sometimes the Rocky Mountain Bank in Florence itself, seizing only the wealth of mine owner Frank Topper. Over time, Brandi could tell the admiration for Evangeline blossomed in Virgil’s eyes, and it was with a special delight that he held her hand while laying bags of gold, cash, and bullion at the stoops of charities and orphanages after rapping on their doors.
Giggling, the two of them would dart into shadows or sometimes climb trees, their legs dangling over branches too high for anyone to see. They watched with relish as tears of joy streamed down the faces of tired workers when they opened the doors to their sudden windfalls. And every time, Virgil would clasp his palms over Evangeline’s cheeks and cautiously pull her in for a kiss. Then he’d stare into her eyes as if this were his reason for breathing.
And each night, the mirror showed that the weary outlaws returned to Bandits Hollow, led by Iron Feather—a hiding place he told them was known only to the Ute tribe near Tava, their sacred mountain. He mentioned that the Utes had no love for Frank Topper and his land-grabbing ways. And there wasn’t a tribe on earth that would utter a word about the outlaws’ whereabouts.
Virgil, on the other hand, did utter words.
Many of them...
Brandi blushed, and her fingers clutched at her heart over the romantic way she saw Virgil take Evangeline by the hand to lay her down one night, after the other men had tied up their horses and bedded near the campfire. Virgil led Evangeline to the privacy of a cave he’d cleaned out in their hollow, flanked by boulders the size of buildings, where he’d built a small fire. Then he pulled her to the floor on the soft hides of buffalo and Native American blankets, running his fingers through her streak of gray hair and embracing her cheeks.
“Evangeline, Evangeline,” he breathed onto her forehead, tenderly unfastening the pearl buttons of her velvet dress and checking her eyes to see if it was all right. “You’ve stolen my heart. How could I guess a wisp of a woman like you would make such a strong outlaw?”
“Strong enough to survive you?” she replied, flashing her gold tooth with a sassy smile that made his eyes dance. “Sometimes, I have my doubts.” Then she stopped his hands from fidgeting with her buttons and held them in hers, blowing on his large fingers until they were warmed. She gently removed his gray, pinstriped shirt, with cotton soft as a child’s blanket from so much wear, revealing his broad, hard chest. With a kiss to his smooth skin, she opened up her dress and laid her nakedness over his heart, listening to the beats run faster at her touch. Virgil smiled, pulling her in for a kiss and unraveling her long dress over her waist and down her hips. Soon, they’d stripped each other of their clothes entirely like armor they no longer wanted, lying together skin on skin. Evangeline traced her fingers down Virgil’s muscular back and pushed his hips towards her, enveloping him with her body.
Their dance was slow at first, igniting with a fever that became overwhelming as their bodies consumed one another, making Brandi gasp and turn away from the mirror.
“Some things are too sacred to look upon,” Lorraine nodded in a hushed tone. “Just wait, sweetheart, till their fire dies down.”
“That don’t seem possible,” Brandi replied. “I fear if I look again, their desire might’ve burned each other to ash.”
Nevertheless, after a quiet spell, Brandi dared to sneak a peek into the mirror. She saw Evangeline covered with a buffalo hide next to Virgil, gazing out the entrance of the cave at the twinkling stars. Her eyes searched for the one fixed in the sky between the treetops that shone the brightest of all: the north star.
Virgil regarded the star as well, but not with the same dreamy look in his eyes. He cleared his throat.
“Y-You ever gonna go back to your people, Evangeline?” he asked, curling a strand of her long hair between his fingers. “We only got one more hit left.”
Evangeline rolled closer and snuggled her head against him, letting her hair spill over his chest like water.
“How ’bout you? You go first–”
“I ain’t got no people, Evangeline. Except the Bandits Hollow Gang. You know that.”
He kissed her forehead and rifled his fingers through her cascading hair. “But after the next train hit,” he explained, “there ain’t no vengeance to be had any more. Topper’s tapped out. I’ve heard creditors are already after him, and some have hired a hit man to take his life. He’s worth more dead than alive these days, with all them fancy houses and hotels to repossess. Reckon I’ll have to figure out something else to do.”
Evangeline nodded, but Virgil could tell she was swallowing a lump in her throat.
“Virgil,” she pulled herself up to meet his gaze, “how does an outlaw not be an outlaw?” she whispered. “From the time the sun first shined on earth till now, t’ain’t no highwayman that could ever stop. Look into my eyes, Virgil, and tell me that ain’t true.”
Virgil stared at her flared gray eyes like he’d been caught.
“I seen your poems all along, the ones you leave at every robbery. They’re downright beautiful. But they’re also lightning strikes, Virgil. Each one a bolt of electricity that puts shivers down my spine. It ain’t the revenge on Topper, or the gold that thrills you. It’s the chase–”
“Stay with me, Evangeline,” he interrupted.
Before she could reply, he kissed her long and slow. The kind of kiss that stamped his longing on her soul, begging her to remain.
“We can ranch,” Virgil promised. “Far away from here. Iron Feather knows people in Abiquiu, New Mexico. They don’t ask questions down there. They’ve never heard of us–”
“Everyone’s heard of us,” Evangeline corrected him. “Haven’t ya seen a newspaper lately? Headlines proclaim the poetic justice of the Bandits Hollow Gang from here to New York City. The whole country’s rootin’ for you, Virgil. You’re famous–”
“Then we’ll escape to another country,” Virgil’s eyes lit up, “like Argentina. I hear it’s beautiful, an’ you can take up raising cattle there. Imagine how stunning you’d look with the South American sun shinin’ through your hair.”
“But the law would come after us,” she scolded him. “Tell me the truth, Virgil–”
Evangeline paused, reaching to her dress in a lump beside the buffalo hide and pulling out crumpled poems from her pocket. She opened up several of them, unfolding the papers to reveal their fl
orid penmanship. Tracing her finger over the words, she pointed at lines that were love letters—not to her, but to adventure. Each one reveled in their risky ambushes and daring getaways.
“If you weren’t writing your poems on the chase,” she whispered, “you’d cease to live, wouldn’t you, Virgil? It’s the love of this game that keeps ya goin’. You have no idea how much I agonize over every single robbery. Whether you’ll come back to me alive–”
“But you’ve got your magic.”
Evangeline shook her head. “Magic can’t trump fate, darlin’.”
She stared gravely into his eyes, her expression so stern it made him wince. But then she clutched his face and kissed him with a fierceness that surprised him, like it might be their last.
“Sooner or later, Virgil,” Evangeline said, “a highwayman will always be buried by the highway. I know this for a fact, my love. That’s centuries of gypsy wisdom talkin’.”
“But I love you, Evangeline,” he asserted with defiance in his eyes. “I love your strong ways, your magical talents, how the wind rifles that silver streak in your hair when you ride after a stagecoach or a train. I-I can’t live without you–”
“But what if you don’t live at all?”
“What’re you saying?”
Evangeline sighed. “Each day is a toss of the dice. A gamble. I never told you about the Tinker curse–”
“What curse?”
“We drive men mad. All of ’em, for centuries.” Evangeline’s gray eyes searched his, and she appeared vulnerable all of a sudden, as though she feared she might fall into his pools of blue and never resurface again. “But here, Virgil, it seems like I’m the one who’s goin’ insane. I may hunger for your body in a way that sends you to the stars, but your love devours my heart.”
Hesitantly, Evangeline held up her arm to him, revealing cuts on her skin. Fresh red welts from carving his name were on the inside of her forearm, with hash marks for each robbery where he didn’t die, as if to shore up her faith that in the next hit he might live.
“I’ve gone off kilter. I think about you day an’ night, worrying about whether I’ll ever see you again, my thoughts spooling ’round and ’round like some crazy spinning wheel till I wish I could die. Just like all those poor men I’ve cursed. Maybe this is my poetic justice, Virgil.”
“No!” he contradicted her. He stood to his feet and gathered her slim frame in his arms, like that day she fell from the sky, and carried her out of the cave into the moonlight. The night air was punctuated by the sounds of snoring men beside their dead campfire.
Virgil walked until they reached a ridge and a small opening in the trees, where the moonlight shone down on her face, making her appear like an angel.
“This light in your eyes won’t ever fade, Evangeline. Even if I do die, don’t you know I’d haunt you forever? You’re my outlaw...bride.”
Virgil bent down and laid her upon a bed of leaves. To her surprise, he set a bright gold nugget, as large as his fist and surely priceless, between her naked breasts.
“I been keepin’ this for you. We’ve given thousands, maybe millions, to the needy. But my heart craves you, Evangeline. Be Mrs. Hollow?”
Evangeline studied his eyes, lit by a summer moon. “Rose Moon,” she whispered, “time to reevaluate hopes n’ dreams.” She clutched the gold nugget that rested against her skin and rubbed it as if it were his heart. Then she linked her arms around Virgil’s neck and pulled him down to her, wrapping her legs around him.
“Don’t you know,” she whispered in his ear, “that a gypsy’s heart can only marry the moon?”
Chapter 8
“Oh my god, did she marry him?” Brandi exclaimed, pawing at the mirror that had abruptly become black. She lifted it up from the ground by its ornate, wooden frame and shook it.
“Were they gonna walk down the aisle?” Lorraine tugged on Brandi’s coat sleeve, confused.
Brandi bowed her head and sighed. “Here, you hold this mirror for a second before I smash that damn glass.”
As Brandi was about to pass the mirror to Lorraine, the mist reappeared, and in it she made out the form of Evangeline’s great-great grandmother.
Shaking, Brandi set the mirror down against the tree, stepping back as though she feared it might bite.
From the haze, Evangeline’s great-great grandmother’s form became clear.
“Evangeline thought the Tinker curse couldn’t affect a man from the past,” she said in a solemn tone, “because he’d already lived his life and died over a hundred years ago, and you couldn’t change history. She felt she could dally with his affection without consequences.”
The woman shook her head, but then smiled a little. “Evangeline never dreamed that she might be the one to fall in love with her whole heart and go mad...”
Before she finished her last words, Brandi saw several riders in the moonlight along a railroad track. A wooden sign nearby said Phantom Canyon. From a few miles away, smoke rose from a steam engine that was advancing toward them. The Bandits Hollow Gang appeared to be waiting on this train that carried the last of Topper’s gold holdings, the one he must have thought would save him from bankruptcy.
The blonde outlaw punched his buddy on the arm who rode beside him on horseback. “Watch out fer ghosts!” he cried, breaking off a stick from a nearby aspen tree to whack his friend’s horse. “This canyon’s been known to harbor a spook or two.”
“Whaddya mean?” his buddy replied.
“Oh, ’cause it got its name from things folks see. Many a dead miner or stagecoach driver has been known to terrorize folks on this route.”
“Shut up. You’re messin’ with my head!”
The blonde outlaw laughed and rode off, followed by his friend who didn’t appear to want to be left alone.
They didn’t notice that Evangeline and her horse were tucked away in the shadows behind a large boulder. As she urged her paint horse to step forward, her face became as white as the moon.
Something—or someone—was hovering over the railroad tracks...
Swiftly, Evangeline held up Iron Feather’s mica rock like a talisman for protection. Nevertheless, the hazy likeness that appeared before her remained suspended in air, bobbing over the train tracks. She watched as it crystallized into human form.
It was the spitting image of Virgil Hollow–
Only he’d been shot through the chest. A bloom of fresh blood stained his shirt over his heart. His features appeared unnaturally gray and pale.
Iron Feather quietly pulled his horse up beside Evangeline, startling her.
Closing her eyes for a second, she patted her chest to try and resume her breath and wrapped her fist around her saddle horn to stop her body from trembling. But then she tightened her reins and whipped out her gun from her coat pocket, forcing it to his temple.
“Moon as my witness, Iron Feather,” Evangeline swore, “I ain’t gonna stay here an’ watch the love of my life die.”
She cocked the hammer, fingers shaking. Yet her gaze had a singular focus that showed she meant every word. “Hand over that turquoise pouch right now.”
Iron Feather didn’t budge. He remained silent in the darkness.
“It will kill Virgil if you leave,” he finally whispered. His words seemed to hang in the cold night air.
“H-He’s gonna die anyway!” Evangeline burst. She pointed at the railroad tracks. “I-I saw his ghost over there, sure as I’m sittin’ here breathin’. An’ I bet you did, too. An’ at least if I go, one of us can keep our sanity. ’Cause make no mistake about it, Iron Feather—I will never recover if I see Virgil Hollow die.”
Evangeline pushed her revolver harder against his temple, tilting his head to the side.
“You could have shot me earlier,” Iron Feather pointed out in a measured tone. Brazenly, he turned to face her, regardless of the barrel now centered on his forehead. “You could have stolen my medicine bag any night you wanted. While we slept by the campfire. But you fell
in love with him, didn’t you? Admit it, Evangeline—that’s why you stayed.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks that shined in the moonlight, dripping onto her saddle.
“Don’t make me stay here, Iron Feather!” she gasped. “Don’t you dare do that to my heart.”
He nodded and reached into his coat for his medicine pouch.
Evangeline stared at his free hand with resignation in her eyes, as if she understood that he could’ve grabbed his own gun and blown her away all along, for he was a seasoned outlaw with far more years of experience behind him.
But he also knew she was right–
It would be downright cruel to make her stay.
“This medicine bag,” Iron Feather said, raising it to the moon, “its color is crushed turquoise from my grandmother’s necklace. The leather is the hide of my best warrior horse, Ha’ii’ago, who died in battle. Do not fool yourself, Evangeline. If you take this bag, its magic will track you.”
“T-Track me?” Her voice fought against tremors. “What do you mean?” Evangeline snatched the bag from his hand before he could change his mind.
A piercing whistle from the oncoming train jarred her, and she took a deep breath and straightened up in her saddle. But when she turned to speak again to Iron Feather, he was gone.
In his place were a couple of white feathers marked with bands of gray on the ground. And somewhere high in the trees, an owl called, as if responding to the train’s lonely whistle.
Chapter 9
Exhausted, Brandi plopped herself down to sit cross-legged by the creek for a second, attempting to gather her wits. She grasped Lorraine’s hand and pulled her down to sit beside her for a spell. When they nestled their long wool coats beneath their legs to keep from getting cold, Brandi cleared her throat, watching the puff of moisture escape into the frosty air.
“Granny must’ve made it back to the present by using an herb from that pouch,” she observed in a hushed tone, fearing spirits might hear her. “And then she came to Bender Lake–”
Spirits of the Season: Eight Haunting Holiday Romances Page 42